Bee-&-Me
Alison Jay
Old Barn Books
Currently living just outside Stroud, Britain’s ‘First Bee Friendly town’ I knew straightway I wanted to review this wonderful wordless book. Wordless it may be but every spread, nay every single picture speaks for itself. The story’s set in a city, a very busy one where, in an apartment block, resides a little girl. Now, like me you probably dislike being buzzed at by bees, let alone stung, so I suspect the girl would have had your sympathies, had she whacked the bee that bothers her. But something stops her. Instead she does this …

followed by …

and some time later, she carefully releases the creature, thinking, one imagines, that’s that.
But along comes a rainstorm and what should reappear at the window looking bedraggled and in need of some T.L.C. but Bee.
And that is the start of a burgeoning friendship …

full of adventures that take the two far afield and back again. Back with some of nature’s bounties

that will ultimately yield not only benefits, but beauty and joy to those residing in the city, be they human or bee.

There is gentle humour running throughout this uplifting tale or rather tales, for this is a multi-layered, multi-faceted telling. One facet shows another unfolding friendship – one between the girl and the boy living above in the same block of flats. And there is a multitude of incidental stories to conjure up through the glimpses of other people’s lives shown through the windows of the neighbouring apartments.
Pictures are such a powerful means of storying: in the right hands, as eloquent as words and just as thought-provoking, as Alison Jay so adroitly demonstrates here. Is it the floral curtains that draw Bee to the girl’s apartment? The passage of time is conveyed through Bee’s growth, and the coming of autumn by the leaves blowing through the city street and the pumpkins outside the florist’s shop –

Words do have their place though – after the story’s end. With a final ‘BEE AWARE!’ information page, giving facts and helpful hints on bee requirements and preferences, readers themselves can take up the vital role of BEE-ing friendly.

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